Hands-on: Forza Motorsport 3 for Xbox 360

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There was a lot too see at Microsoft’s Open House event this week, but one thing that really stood out was station with a playable (retail) copy of Forza Motorsport 3. As the gamers out there know, this is the upcoming triple-A title for the Xbox 360, a driving simulator designed to compete with the best of them. With Need for Speed: Shift having been recently released and Gran Turismo 5 arriving soon (well, spring 2010) it was exciting to get an early look at Forza.

Forza lands October 27th, so the retail copy we played was hot off the presses. Next to it was the limited edition version, which arrived in a nicer outer case, along with a 2GB USB memory stick, and a chromed key fob. There are some other in-games bonuses as well.

During a demo of the game we ran through basic gameplay elements as well as some of the more advanced features, like car upgrades, customization, online interaction with other players, and so on. It’s a deep game with a lot of things for the player to do at any one time. By way of example, one activity you can do is to create a custom exterior for your car (paint, stickers, etc.), upload that to Forza’s online store, and then sell it for in-game credits. Other players can buy your design for their vehicles and the money will go to the designer. Just as there are leaderboards for the best drifters and fastest racers, there are leaderboards for the top designers.

The actual driving felt great, as one would expect from this high profile series. It was just a demo, but in the time I spent with the controls the car felt very dialed-in. The physics were just what I wanted from a driving sim–which is to say that they seemed very accurate and a high-horsepower car was very hard to keep on the track if mishandled. The BMW M5 that I initially drove was powerful but had a serious weight to it just as a large sedan would. Drifting was possible with the M5 but I initially tested it with most of the game’s assists on (autobraking, traction control, etc.) so I had to try to spin the car out. When I did loosen the tires when drifting the game had no reservations about spinning me around and I found myself doing donuts on the track. Forza is punishing when you get off the track and go into the sand–there won’t be any shortcuts or corner cutting in this racing game.

Forza Motorsport 3, unlike many older racing games does have car damage. This can be purely aesthetic (as in it won’t affect the speed or handling of your car) or it slow you down. I didn’t get to test this much but in the aesthetic-only mode I did chip the paint on my dream car–the BMW E30 M3 that I tested after the M5.

Visually, the game looked quite good. Need for Speed: Shift could be the prettier of the two, but Forza is no slouch. The car models look fantastic and the tracks/settings are great as well, taking advantage of everything the Xbox 360 can put out. The addition of fantasy tracks to the roster of real ones gave the designers some license to create beautiful, if sometimes impractical, places to race.

The game has a full complement of multiplayer modes. I didn’t get to test these, but I did see the leaderboards and player store. Players can create custom cars through the endless number of car options and then sell them to other players. These could be for a reasonable price, or something outrageous. For example, someone had a not-so-great paint job and sticker kit for the game’s flagship car (the Audi R8) for sale for an outrageous one million credits, which is amusing but not something people will buy. Other packages were much more reasonable.

Forza 3 has a complete upgrade system for cars, so if you get attached to a particular car you can customize it and bring it from a lower class to something higher. So this means you could theoretically have your Honda Civic totally upgraded and competing with A or even S class cars (Ferraris for example) if you sink enough money into it. This doesn’t mean that the Civic will be any good–it would probably end up being fast in a straight line and then unable to compete on the turns. Regardless, this gives more life to the cars and is something fun to do with your credits. If you aren’t a total gearhead the game has a optimization setting which will give your car the best possible setup available to you with the push of a button. There is also a vehicle benchmark which will let you see the change your upgrades make to metrics like horizontal G forces and speed without having to drive the car. All the changes done to the car add/subtract weight, affecting handling, plus they can be seen in your car’s model (including from the dashboard racing view). So if you add a roll cage your car will get stiffer, get heavier, and then you’ll see the cage in the car when you are racing, both from the third-person view and from the in-car view.

It should go without saying that a lot of thought went into this game. The representative from Turn 10 Studios seemed very happy with how it turned out and proud of what the development team was able to accomplish. From what I saw of the game I was able to leave the demo impressed and very much looking forward to its release. It’s a bit early for judgments, but so far Forza 3 is looking like my pick over Need for Speed: Shift. We have some time before seeing how Gran Turismo 5 turns out, but given it and Forza’s exclusivity both PS3 and Xbox 360 gamers should have top-notch racing sims for 2010.